The Second of May
by NarglesInTheMistletoe
Summary: What it means to them all.


**Happy realese of Deathly Hallows, fellow Harry Potter lovers!**

**Me and frieeends are off to the Midnight Screening – sooooo happy! However, I am getting anxious wondering how much butchering David Yates managed this time around.**

**Soo, anyway. This is to commemorate this auspicious occasion! I was going to save it for next May, but ehh.**

**Review? x**

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**1998.**

The world has stopped turning. Or so it would seem.

It's hard to grasp the idea that not everyone has lost their other half; that not everyone's child has been murdered by their sister; that not everyone can only manage the idea of sleep and a sandwich.

It's hard to draw another breath as your master's body is removed and you are locked away; as you cry over your son's body; as you finally get to run your fingers through her mane or red hair and know you'll never have to let her go.

It's hard not to laugh, not to cry, not to scream, not to collapse, not to proclaim to those around you that it's all over.

But you manage. Because the world keeps turning.

**1999.**

Everything's changed. Nothing's as it was. To not think about this he tries not to look back.

But now it happens. Three-hundred and sixty-five days. Nights. Seven-hundred and thirty turns of the little hand on his clock. Now people don't want to forget; now they want to remember. And for the life of him he doesn't get why.

**2000.**

They were all thinking the same thing; will it be like that again?

Wondering if the second time it will still hurt so much. Hoping that it was only so maddeningly confronting last year because it was the first time. Wishing it would be easier to forget, adore, remember, praise and thank _him_ this year.

The answer was yes; it was just as awful. But then something amazing happened. And they didn't have to be sad anymore. Victoire Gabrielle Weasley was early. It was so unexpected; so ironic; so victorious. _He_ would have loved it.

**2001.**

She feels it approaching. She watches the way her husband's movements slow, his eyes develop great shadows and his posture decomposes in the weeks beforehand. She doesn't want the first anniversary of her baby's birth to be the third anniversary of his brother's death.

So she approaches him tentatively, gently. Slowly, subtly; just as the days do leading up to the eventful date. She asks him if he wants to go away for Victoire's birthday. He agrees.

They go out to the beach; their first home. They leave behind his weeping family and the bad memories.

**2002.**

He wants to hide away again this year. He usually does. It's all too shameful.

In the previous years he would either hide away in his deteriorating house, or go back home and have a subdued lunch with his parents in his grand dining room, no longer relying on house-elves or maids but instead his mother's capable hands.

But Astoria won't have that. This is the first year she'll be out of school, and so she takes him out with – much to his dismay – their friends. A little huddle of ex-Slytherins drinking in a bar, laughing and pretending nothing happened.

**2003.**

He wonders if it hurt so badly only because he was a still a kid. In the previous years he could pass off fuck ups as a young guy still finding his feet. Not anymore.

Now he's married. Now his little sister's having a baby. Now Luna's moved away and Neville's engaged. He can no longer say he's the little boy waiting to have the dirt rubbed off his nose.

And so he holds his head high; he goes to visit his parents; he brings Victoire her present. Then he goes home for his wife to promise it will be better next year.

**2004.**

Teddy's getting too old.

It's very hard, watching her baby's baby grow up.

He's too inquisitive now; wanting to know why everyone makes a big deal about this one day.

It's hard to tell the truth.

**2005.**

He briefly wonders what happened to his old school friends. He wonders if Harry managed to hold on to Ginny. He wonders if Ron and Hermione still bicker. He misses them.

He wonders if he should owl Harry, and thank him on this date. He asks Dean and he tells him he's not sure; probably because he was smart enough to stay in touch.

He misses the way things used to be. Lives are better now, but he missed how it used to be; hidden away at school, fucking up with Dean, ignorant of what went on behind closed doors.

He wonders if he would feel differently if he had managed to hold onto old friendships. If he hadn't decided Ernie wasn't fun now he had a big Ministry job. If he hadn't hated the way Anthony talked about nothing but his kids. If he could stand that Michael's place was so much bigger than his own. Maybe he just had to accept people changed as they got older and had to adapt to marriage and kids and the real world.

He doesn't like that Dean adapted without him. He doesn't like that he and Parvati named their kids Lavender and Seamus. He doesn't like that Lavender grew up and he didn't.

**2006.**

The women sat together side by side, faces split open with joy, holding their babies in their arms.

The family no longer celebrated the date. They ignored letters from friends commemorating the day. They turned down party invitations. They didn't respond to well-wishers who passed them in the street. Instead they would gather at the Burrow, and have birthday cake and give Victoire her presents.

This year was special though; she could feel it. Albus and Rose were beautiful; perfect in every way. She couldn't keep her eyes off them. And Rosie meant each of her children had had their own children and had found someone as remarkable as Arthur.

Except Charlie, of course.

**2007.**

In a month's time, his brother will have been dead for a decade. Locked in the white tomb on the edge of a cold, crisp lake. All alone. He finds it a little insulting that they didn't ask him if he was okay with that; it was _his_ brother. Perhaps he would have liked him buried in Godric's Hollow with his sister and mother.

But no. No one thought to ask. And actually, he doesn't care that much.

He regrets fighting that day, eight years ago today. He regrets watching children die fighting for something they didn't understand. He imagined the twinkle in his brother's eyes if he were to tell him that, and his cool, serene voice.

'_People will fight for what they care about. Don't tell me you don't know that_.'

And then he would take note of his brother's nose, and congratulate himself.

**2008.**

Marrying a Muggle was good for her. She could put it all behind her.

A few years after school she came to a point where she would leave her wand at home. Another year she put it away, in a box under her bed. Another year she told her parents to stop sending her owls, and she would teach them how to use a phone. When she got married she told her husband her parents only acted odd because they were just elderly immigrants who didn't speak much English and missed China.

Everyone thought she was insane. And sometimes she would wonder it herself. But if she was, then it was okay because really, when you think about it, to believe in magic was pretty insane.

But it didn't matter that much. She knew he would understand. Or he would if he wasn't dead.

**2009.**

His brother was his best friend.

If you had looked at the old camera, most of the photos would have been of the boys together, pulling faces and annoying their mother.

He remembers when he first started school, and how he had been told (by his brother, of course) how spectacularly, wonderfully great Harry Potter was.

If Harry was so great, why didn't he save Collin?

**2010.**

Crooks don't celebrate auspicious occasions. He told Sirius that at Christmas, when he had tried to get him singing. Sirius had thrown back his head and laughed.

He felt slightly lost without the order. He missed the twins and giving them advice on prices and bargaining. He missed Molly shooing him out of the kitchen. He missed Remus giving him disapproving looks and shaking his head. He missed Tonks, because she was the only one who would laugh at him. He missed Moody barking at him and calling him a coward. He missed the red-headed children darting around and attempting to listen at the doors. He even missed that bloody house-elf.

The chase was good; the fight; the plans; the people involved in the fight. It was the capture he didn't like; George lost his business partner; Molly was one child short; Remus and Tonks' baby never met his parents; Moody died, of course; the house-elf lost its malice.

That was why he would go see Hagrid and get drunk each year to celebrate. Because the second of May was the furthest you could get from auspicious.

**2011.**

Each year they would get a letter from their daughter, wishing them well, asking them how it was in Australia and updating them of Hugo and Rose.

They never quite understood what was special about that date, but without fail the letter would arrive with a tawny owl.

And every year, if you held the letter to the light, faint tear-tracks were visible over the tidy writing.

**2012.**

She's a mother this year. It's odd. Very odd. Odd even for her.

All her friends have already grown up; admitted defeat and bought a house and secured a career. She and Rolf were much too clever for anything like seriousness.

Her mother once told her that she used her stories as a defense mechanism, a way to ignore the unpleasant truth. She used to claim that she couldn't do her chores because Nargles are angered by the absence of dust, and that Whackspurts like overgrown rose-bushes. Perhaps she was so good at pretending it was herself who got her to believe that.

Maybe she and Rolf spent nine years chasing something that even they can't pretend is real anymore because they've been attempting to deny the fact that they need to go back to Britain and get employed and buy a home.

So this year she does what she's supposed to do. From the fireplace in their new home she pops into her friend's fireplaces, wishing them long lives and wellness. Because Lorcan and Lysander are so vivid and immovable in her mind that they've stopped her denying anything else.

**2013.**

He wants to see his cousin more, instead of just at Christmas or his kids' birthdays. A small, strange part of him misses him. His school friends are either living in urine-soaked apartments after their wives left them, passed out in unsanitary bars or in gaol. An odd part of him counts his cousin as his only living link to his childhood.

He eventually found out what day it was. And so now each year he sends Harry a letter. He never does get a reply.

**2014.**

He sees pictures in the paper, the same every year, different in only the gradually increasing lines on Kingley's kind face. Every year it's the same; speeches on how far the Wizarding world has come, how every year the Ministry thanks those who fought, how his heart goes out to those families.

What's so great about him anyway? Sure, he's charismatic. And maybe he doesn't lie to the public. And maybe he is young and capable and down-to-earth.

But what did he ever do wrong, really? Is wanting to keep people happy so bad?

He wonders this every year, as he sits at home at his kitchen table, forgotten by the Ministry; by the Wizarding world.

**2015.**

It's hard to accept when you're getting old. It's hard to look back and realize it's all slipped through your fingers.

Luckily for her, she can look back and feel her grip tighten around dates and happening and achievements. She's proud of what she's done. She likes that the school's still standing because of her.

And so when she retires it's okay. She doesn't think she can handle a _second_ James Potter anyway.

**2016.**

No matter what the family said, her birthday was never really her birthday. It didn't really matter, because she was at school for it anyway, even if classes were excused.

Some people went home for the date, generally people who had lost family or had parents who had fought in the Final Battle. This included her cousins, even though, according to her dad, the date wasn't about Uncle Fred and instead about her. But she knew she was just an ignorant convenience to get them out of painful situations.

Teddy usually stayed with her though; he didn't like being home at this time either. Andromeda would drag him along to her sister's, and he would have to listen to them gossip on, and would have to pretend to get on with that friend of Albus'.

Too bad for her Teddy's finished school.

**2017.**

When Victoire turned fourteen, she stopped coming home each May. He understood why; their parents were awfully tactless about the date. But even so, he thought it a bit unfair that she no longer consented to let them use her as a distraction.

But he's distracted this year, even if no one else is. He's glad James is coming home. He wants to hear more about school, and what to expect, and what not to do.

So instead of listening to their parents tell sad stories (hardly realizing they're doing it) him and Rose sit, avidly listening to every piece of bullshit James tells them.

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**Sorry if it was below standards. Eep. If any of them are unclear, please do not hesitate to ask, but I think most of them are. The first few are all from the perspective of different Weasleys.**

**Revieeew? X**

**Enjoy DH!**


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